Subject: Re: [alsa-devel] Re: [linux-audio-dev] laaga, round 2
From: Tom Pincince (stillone_AT_snowcrest.net)
Date: Sun May 13 2001 - 21:16:22 EEST
> For what it's worth. I know Paul doesn't seem to understand how much
> difficulty his bus model is going to cause the user, so I don't expect
> much movement here unless Almighty-God-On-High intervenes with a
> miracle.
While the buss model may or may not be the best for an all encompassing
server, it is the most accurate model for representing the functionality
of a physical mixer. AES/ardour is a mixer/recorder/editor, so it makes
sense that it would evolve to this form to provide mixer functionality.
For comparison to physical mixers, take a simple mackie 1604 vlz. It
has 26 inputs, 25 outputs, 18 inserts, and 16 busses. More advanced
mixers have even more busses. A user who is familiar with the buss
architecture within a traditional mixer will probably find this model
quite easy to understand and a pleasure to use. You favor a patchbay
model. Interestingly, the patchbay configuration that many users find
to be the most useful is the half normal configuration which adds
limited buss functionality to the patchbay concept. One could design a
gui that allows some busses to look like a patchbay, a buss with only
one input. Busses are very generic and can be used in many ways,
including all of the ways that a patchbay can be used. Patchbays can
not provide all of the functionality of busses. AES has 32 busses, and
the connection to them can be made to look like anything; a channel
strip, an aux send, a patchbay, or whatever (paul, maybe you should bump
this back up to 64 busses). The fact that paul realized that the buss
architecture of the mixer can be opened up to be accessible to other
apps should not be seen as a problem.
Tom
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